New Light on “Delete Any Emails”

The original email here is one of the most notorious Climategate emails. The UK Information Commissioner said that “more cogent” prima facie evidence of an offence under the FOI Act was impossible to contemplate, but noted a statute of limitations limited their jurisdiction. The UK Parliamentary Committee asked Muir Russell to investigate. Muir Russell refused. Muir Russell pointed out to the Committee in his evidence last fall that asking Jones about delete emails might result in the identification of an offence.

It was the second question considered by the inquiry stage of the two-stage Penn State process, articulated as follows:

2. Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?

The “inquiry” reported as follows:

He [Mann] explained that he never deleted emails at the behest of any other scientist, specifically including Dr. Phil Jones, and that he never withheld data with the intention of obstructing science; …

On January 15, 2010, and on behalf of the inquiry committee, Dr. Foley conveyed via email an additional request of Dr. Mann, who was asked to produce all emails related to the fourth IPCC report (“AR4”), the same emails that Dr. Phil Jones had suggested that he delete.

On January 18, 2010, Dr. Mann provided a zip-archive of these emails and an explanation of their content. In addition, Dr. Mann provided a ten page supplemental written response to the matters discussed during his interview.

They summarized their results as follows:

Allegation 2: Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?

Finding 2. After careful consideration of all the evidence and relevant materials, the inquiry committee finding is that there exists no credible evidence that Dr. Mann had ever engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data related to AR4, as suggested by Dr. Phil Jones. Dr. Mann has stated that he did not delete emails in response to Dr. Jones’ request. Further, Dr. Mann produced upon request a full archive of his emails in and around the time of the preparation of AR4. The archive contained e-mails related to AR4.

New Information from Eugene Wahl

The Inspector General of the Department of Commerce (to which NOAA belongs) has recently reported on an investigation of issues arising out of the Climategate emails. (They did not interview me or, to my knowledge, any critics.)

However, in their investigation, they interviewed Eugene Wahl, now a NOAA scientist. Astonishingly, Wahl was not interviewed by either the Penn State or UK inquiries. (Wahl is not named as such in the report, but is readily identified from the context.)

The original email request from Jones to Mann had asked:

Mike,
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise… Can you also email Gene [Wahl] and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar [Ammann] to do likewise.
Cheers, Phil

Mann replied the same day as follows:

Hi Phil,
… I’ll contact Gene [Wahl] about this ASAP. His new email is: generwahl@xxx
talk to you later,
mike

Wahl told the Inspector General that “he believes that he deleted the referenced emails at the time”. The excerpt from the report is as follows:

The timing is interesting here. Mann’s deletion request to Wahl came on May 29, 2008, only a few months before Wahl became an employee of NOAA (Aug 2008.) Because Wahl’s deletion of the emails took place prior to him becoming an employee of NOAA, NOAA policies on record retention were not applicable.

The question asked by Penn State was:

Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?

Previously we knew (from the Climategate emails) that Mann had told Phil Jones that he would ask Wahl to delete any emails on AR4. Now we know that Wahl “believes that he deleted the referenced emails at the time”.

Now this does not prove that Wahl deleted his emails on or about May 29, 2008 as a result of receiving an email from Mann asking him to do so – it might have been a coincidence. But – contrary to Penn State findings – it is certainly prima facie evidence warranting an investigation.

In earlier CA posts on the Penn State inquiry, I observed that Penn State thumbed their noses at Office of Research Integrity procedures for academic misconduct. These procedures state that first stage inquiries are only charged with determining prima facie evidence and should not attempt to make the findings that are the province of an investigation. Instead of adhering to ORI procedures, Penn State purported to make final findings on key issues (including deletion of emails) without a full investigation. The issue of email deletion should have been passed from the inquiry to an investigation and the investigation committee should have interviewed Wahl, before purporting to dispose of the matter.

I take it the emails were NOT hosted on a university mail server? If they were, indeed the backups would only be 24hrs, worst case, out. I’ve yet to see an unix box of any flavour that didn’t have a daily to tape or FTP and my exposure to such goes back to 1987. I can point you to Western Canadian universities, mining companies, pharmacies and a myriad of others that one and all have a full decade’s worth of complete backups (even cases of `80’s 360’s) for each office and division readily available. A host of Canadians would where major universities in the US and UK who themselves deal in data would not? Seriously?

At a certain point in every crisis, people begin to understand the degree of liability that they face. Penn State faces the specter of congressional hearings. There is a finding of fact in the public record that (1) Dr. Mann stated that he would ask Wahl to delete emails and (2) Wahl stated that he did, in fact, deleted those very emails. If Penn State does not investigate this, then surely they will be called to account by Congress. I can assure you that right now, as we speak, lawyers at Penn State are running around with their hair on fire over this. This looks very, very bad for their so called “investigation”. Penn State now needs to decide whether they want to be hammer or the nail.

I doubt there is much running around and further probing – too much chance of Brady material being produced. The next step is for the university to circle the wagons if some action with potential legal consequences begins. Or they could destroy their position in climate science by throwing the individuals to the wolves; I consider this unlikely. In any event, further talks would be with the lawyers, not some internal investigation group to keep the information under attorney – client privilege. At least, that’s how I understand the game is played.

To what purpose are you pursuing this? Criminal convictions – no of course not! you still have the mental capacity to realise that a direct accusation would not be wise. Leave it up to your accolytes to do this on their own blogs.

You should get back to what you were good at – auditing

you should either accuse outright or desist
you should not insinuate
you should not speculate

it’s Steve’s blog, he can do what he wants. Don’t like McIntyre pointing out the university didn’t follow it’s own rules? I guess facts are inherently truculent things to deal with. That’s nobody’s fault but the university, so the best path seems to complain to them.

Attention corporate denizens of the Black Medallion, the cyber cloak has been breached. Deploy the reflector balloons immediately and conduct all communication in accordance with the Limbaugh Directive (try using those telepathy things they gave us; they’re really neat).

“Let’s get going, there’s no other choice. God willing, we will prevail, in peace and freedom from fear, and in true health, through the purity and essence of our natural fluids.”

My general model on things like these is people act when there is a public embarassment. The action is frequently to gloss over and claim there really is no problem. It’s much more tedious to do detailed work, find real problems, and go about correcting them. The resulting publicity would be seen as potentially damaging the university’s reputation more than a poor job of investigating (and clearing) allegations.

This isn’t just a university problem; it seems to be a result of human nature, but that’s speculation on my part.

“2. Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?”

Surely when he sent Wahl’s email address to Jone’s, and when he communicated this matter himself to Wahl. he did “engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails,” Wahl’s admittedly.

I think the UK Information Commisioner would be thinking along lines of prima facie evidence in the light of Wahl’s answer to the US Inspector General, and Wahl’s actual response that he did delete emails at that time. Whether or not he did this as a NOAA employee is not material to Mann’s “participation” in the deletionary expedition emanating fro Jones.

It doesn’t take much more than a schoolboy to see Mann’s avoidance of directly answering the question.
Would there be any chance of securing Mann’s ZIP file by FOI?

I believe that Jones did not have the emails so could not delete them and could say truthfully that he hadn’t deleted them when asked. But Jones did ask for them to be deleted but was never asked if he had asked for them to be deleted by the inquiries.

Not suggesting it at all, it was Russell who ignored the question as he allegedly did not want to get into a legal prosecution area. But as Jones was not on the circulation of the emails he could not delete them and was happy to answer the question ‘Did you delete them’, its the fault of the inquiries they did not follow the obvious wrong of asking others to delete emails that had just been asked for in an FOI.

I always found it pretty pointless to ask, especially if they didn’t want to bring up criminal charges. Just investigate whether they did, period. If there is no audit trail, then asking is as useless as Ali Baba’s comments here.

Re: “The UK Information Commissioner said that “more cogent” prima facie evidence of an offence under the FOI Act was impossible to contemplate, but noted a statute of limitations limited their jurisdiction.”

“The offence itself, because it is not based on statute, is not easily defined and perhaps this is why it is used. It gathers into one offence, a range of official misconducts, frauds, deceits, breaches of trust, and disclosures of information. “Malfeasance in public office” has two related cousins – “nonfeasance in public office” (eg a wilful neglect of duty) and “misfeasance in public office” (eg malicious exercise of official duty).”

I’m not even a regular scientist, much less a (sound of choir, ray of sunlight from parted clouds) “CLIMATE Scientist”, so don’t really know what goes on behind the curtain, but I will say that it is increasingly apparent to me that much of “science” (save that bastion of purity, mathematics), has been corrupted by greed, a political agenda (whose operatives are dupes of the former, really, viz. Al Gore and the climatebots), or both.

It’s apparent that, among the plebs like me, the ultimate source of “science” funding, there is a growing skepticism of “big (government) science”, and the tide is slowly turning against it. This is just another little swell in the sea of reasons for that.

Whatever the merits of any particular incident in the case of “climategate”, it’s clear there’s plenty of obfuscation and opacity going on.

The vitriol and namecalling rises in proportion to the level of climatologist “team” misdemeanor that is revealed. Pretty toxic at the moment. The pin dropped for Judith Curry, at long last, so tfp and the others seem absolutely frantic. Remind anyone of a certain Libyan dictator’s ranting?

thefordprefect: You’ll regret these posts when you read them in the cold light of day, they show a man/woman riven with hatred, unable to engage in discourse on topic, and spewing bile where there should be polemic.

Following events:

Jones asked Mann to delete emails;

Mann told Penn State’s intitial inquiry that he’s had no part in deleting emails (it is difficult to see what other response he could have made given the gravity of the offence). Penn State exonerated Mann without an investigation.

Wahl pops up saying he’d deleted the emails, as Mann was asked to ask Wahl to delete the emails, and there are no direct references to Wahl from Jones it raises the question of what instigated Wahl’s deletion of the emails.

If you’re not interested in the possibility that scientists at the heart of the IPCC process broke the rules of their own process, and could care less, that’s fine, but you can’t berate others, or compare them to Commie hunting McArthyites for wanting the truth to come out.

Nick’s query is valid. Mann’s and Wahl’s emails were not then subject to FOIA or EIR query, and the IPCC likely does not impose any requirements to preserve emails (though I stand to be corrected). The issue is what Mann told the Penn investigators, and whether it is consistent with what Wahl told the IG investigators. On the face of it they don’t seem to line up.

“The issue is what Mann told the Penn investigators, and whether it is consistent with what Wahl told the IG investigators.”

What emails exactly did Mann zip up and send to the second Penn State enquiry?
Does anyone other than the enquiry panel and Mann know exactly what was sent. Importantly Mann is the only person who knows which emails he did not sendd.
At no point have I seen a plane statement from Mann that he zipped up all the relevant emails. (I stand ready for correction).

If review comments were made in secret and the email correspondence was deleted to destroy the evidence of that, it seems that would be a violation of IPCC rules. Not necessarily talking about violating FOI here, just that Jones was afraid that FOI could be used to get the evidence that something outside of the stated IPCC rules had transpired. His request to delete this evidence is an indication to me that he was aware of the rules and transparency requirements and was acting to hide any evidence to the contrary.

Ross, I think that it is more accurate to say that Mann and wahl’s emails were “subject to” FOI but no inquiry had been made at that time.

There’s an obvious aspect to the incident that Muir Russell failed to address. Presumably Jones anticipated that Holland or someone else would FOI Mann or Wahl in the future and sought to preempt that by getting them to delete their emails. Quite aside from whether this was a violation of UK FOI legislation, it seems like a tortious attempt to interfere with Holland’s rights under US FOI legislation.

I am assuming that an FOI or EIR request in the UK would have no force on emails held by someone in the US. Whether they are subject to FOI depends on the US and state laws. Later, when Wahl joined a NOAA agency his emails (including IPCC ones) would become agency records subject to FOI rules, as confirmed by the IG report just released. But up to that point, namely at the time Jones transmitted the request to Mann, it seems to me that Mann and Wahl would be within their rights to delete emails they held concerning the IPCC report because the IPCC does not specifically declare email traffic to be part of the review process. (Maybe they should, but that’s another matter).

What is at issue here is whether PSU properly investigated the question they themselves wanted answered, namely

Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?

The first Penn State Inquiry concluded (p. 5)

After careful consideration of all the evidence and relevant materials, the inquiry committee finding is that there exists no credible evidence that Dr. Mann had ever engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data related to AR4, as suggested by Dr. Phil Jones. Dr. Mann has stated that he did not delete emails in response to Dr. Jones’ request. Further, Dr. Mann produced upon request a full archive of his emails in and around the time of the preparation of AR4. The archive contained e-mails related to AR4.

It is that finding that I think sits uneasily against the IG Report. Did the PSU committee ask Wahl if Mann had transmitted Jones’ request to him, and if so, what did he do in response? It sounds like the IG did ask the question, and obtained an answer that would lead to a rather different conclusion than the one PSU drew. If PSU did not ask the question, on what basis did they claim to have examined “all” the evidence and that they were able to make such a sweeping conclusion?

“Allegation 2: Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?”

Manns response was “He [Mann] explained that he never deleted emails at the behest of any other scientist, specifically including Dr. Phil Jones, and that he never withheld data with the intention of obstructing science; …”

This is a none responsive answer that only addresses whether he himself deleted his e-mails. It doesn’t respond to the entire question. Telling Wahl to delete his e-mails is a ‘direct action with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?’

His response is what is known as lying by omission. A lie by omission is a lie none the less. If you do it under oath you go to jail for it. That is what “whole truth” thing you are sworn is about it is to make it clear that lying by omission is also considered perjury.

So in short this has nothing to do with the legality of Wahl destroying his e-mails. It has to do with Mann lying to the inquiry.

Now this does not prove that Wahl deleted his emails on or about May 29, 2008 as a result of receiving an email from Mann asking him to do so – it might have been a coincidence. But – contrary to Penn State findings – it is certainly prima facie evidence warranting an investigation.

Boy is this bending over backwards to be fair to Wahl. How you do it Steve I don’t know.

Re: Tony Hansen (Feb 24 07:30),
I think to be effective everyone has to have the capacity to discuss and evaluate other peoples work in private. They will anyway. That’s really the issue here. Heavy-handed FOI just shifts the venue.

We used to have this issue in a big way with employment decisions. The sort of discussion you have about who is to be your next CEO or whatever just can’t be held in public, if you want to nake a good decision. You need honest critical referee reports, for example. Noone is going to make those if they are likely to be published. So when FOI came in, lots of “document retention policies” were implemented.

Unfortunately, that does not work with publicly owned entities. The sort of discussion you have about who is your next CEO regards a private company, not a publicly owned company, and should be handled in private – just because a company offers stock to the public does not make it “public” in any relative sense. Bad analogy.

Heavy handed FOI shifts the venue to where it belongs, in the hands of the public. In fact, FOI should not have been required in the first place because the public already owns the information.

And it is unlikely that policy makers will be basing global energy policies affecting every person in their country on the outcome of those “private” discussions.

Besides, it was the IPCC’s rules. If it is so damn important to have these reviews in private, why adopt a policy that is the polar opposite of that? And why would these scientist agree to work under those conditions if went against getting the best result?

They were found out changing a report chapter outside of the prescribed procedures and have done everything they can to keep that from coming to light. Why do you keep defending this?

Let’s play your game. Why do you think Jones made the request? If destruction/deletion is perfectly fine, why would he be so insistent on having everyone delete all their e-mails? Where did Jones screw up in thinking that it needed to be done?

This document says that “the review process should be objective, open and transparent.” and that

All written expert, and government review comments will be made available to reviewers on request during the review process and will be retained in an open archive in a location determined by the IPCC Secretariat on completion of the Report for a period of at least five years.
This precludes secret contacts of the type carried out between Wahl and Briffa – where the comments were not placed in the open archive.

Re: glacierman (Feb 24 08:58),
No, they are talking there about a specific process for review of the actual report. The reference is to documents actually submitted to the IPCC panels. There’s no requirement that anyone who has an off-line discussion about some matter relating to the report has to place that on the archive. And of course, that would be totally impracticable.

The emails in question were regarding a change in a key report that panel members did not get to see. They approved a different version of the report and the changed version was put into the final document without review. This is against the rules and intent of the principles as described in the attached IPCC document.

As was stated previously by Steven Mosher:
“So, I take it that Jones suggested that people delete mails to cover up something that wasn’t wrong? Maybe Jones should have consulted you as you obviously know the rules better than he does. Perhaps, you’d like to read the mail where Jones informs Christy about the rules about deadlines for submissions.”

The Penn State inquiry believed that they had jurisdiction. If their position was that there would not be an offence under the Penn State code even if the allegations were true, then this is precisely the sort of finding that an inquiry could make. That’s what prima facie is about.

But that’s not what they did.

Although “inquiries” are supposed to leave evidence taking for a proper “investigation committee”, the “inquiry” stage took evidence and incorrectly said that there was no prima facie evidence for Mann actually participating directly or indirectly in the deletion of emails.

What I said in my post – and I was intentionally precise – is that the inquiry committee should have put the issue to the investigation committee.

Its a computer generated fantasy for lazy people like TFP who really should go back to the UK’s Daily Mail comments…Mind you Geronimo, he get slain there as well so all he can do here is insult S.M. without any science getting involved!

It would seem that the last week has had, as Mark F said “vitriol and namecalling rises in proportion to the level of climatologist “team” misdemeanor that is revealed” The walls are crumbling!

“On January 15, 2010, and on behalf of the inquiry committee, Dr. Foley conveyed via email an additional request of Dr. Mann, who was asked to produce all emails related to the fourth IPCC report (“AR4”), the same emails that Dr. Phil Jones had suggested that he delete.

On January 18, 2010, Dr. Mann provided a zip-archive of these emails and an explanation of their content.”

When it was only the emails to/from Briffa re AR4 that Jones asked to be deleted:

“> Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
> Keith will do likewise.”

The inquiry seems to have found emails related to AR4 and concluded there were none of the requested deletions, without seeing the archive we can’t know for sure.

Mark, the nesting is a little messed up. Either Nick had second thoughts about his credibility, or the obscurity of my response put him off. Nonetheless, breaking faith with the herd, as these climate scientists have done, was proscribed before speech. And punished before speech, too.
============

It seems that Jones was wanting some emails deleted. He asked Mann to delete them and spread the word. Mann says he didn’t delete them and that he sent all of his emails to the inquiry. Ergo, if Mann is telling the truth, the offending emails are in that zip file. I’m curious what it was in the emails that Jones was so worried about? Let’s be pressing to unzip shall we? If there is nothing there then Mann lied about sending all the emails. If there is something there, then it should be interesting. If no one wants to unzip what does that tell you?

I’m not so certain FOI is necessarily the reason for such data retention policies, either. An old-school lawyer may know better, but I’m pretty sure doing business with the government has always had fairly comprehensive requirements regarding what could and could not be deleted. FOI just gave the public an easy avenue for accessing such data.

A better question is, what was it Jones really wanted to prevent being made public?

The back-channel Briffa/Wahl emails were improper in the opinion of many, as was the retrospective change in the deadline by which a final preprint of papers had to be held by the TSU. This had allowed the Wahl and Amman paper to remain cited even though at the time of Expert Review stage it broke the published rules. My request of 27 May 2007 that led to the “delete any emails” asked for information pertaining to those issues and was fully described in my submission to Russell. It also asked another question that Jones must have understood as would Briffa who was away at the time.

Now we know Russell was a whitewash and my that submission was hacked down to a quarter of its size and striped of most formatting and hard evidence before it was put to UEA, but even so all the AR4 and AR5 Lead Authors and Review Editors signed up to up a plausible argument that they did nothing wrong on the back-channel and the deadline issues. Jones and Co. were acquitted – or more correctly not found guilty.

So what was it that prompted the “delete any emails” if they all believed that they had not done anything wrong in Bergen? If deadlines and back-channels was all that this was about, what was in my submission that caused it to be so mutilated that even I did not at first recognise it? What of real importance did they want left out and not investigated?

What is perhaps not so well known is that I also wrote to Renate Christ the 27 May 2007 in connection with the WGI TSU memo of 3 July 2006 that changed the deadline and which had begun,

“We are very grateful to the many reviewers of the second draft of the Working Group I contribution to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report for suggestions received on issues of balance and citation of additional scientific literature.”

I then asked, but got no reply,

“Can you please tell me to which of the published WGI reviewers’ comments the Manning memo is referring, and provide me with the minutes of the meeting at which the Manning memo was discussed and authorised?”

If as I believe, after hours of trawling through the WGI Expert Reviewer comments there were none that asked for a deadline change even remotely like that which the TSU was then announcing, WGI had sent out a lie to hundreds of Expert Reviewers around the world. What would that say for the honesty and rigour of WGI climate scientists working for the IPCC?

This accusation was detailed in my submission as sent to Russell but stripped from what was put to UEA. I could be wrong and maybe the TSU had received “many” such suggestions. There are more than 11,000 comments and there is no easily demonstrable way of proving that I am right but it would have been trivially easy for Russell to prove me wrong. He could have listed just a few of the “many” comments that justified the deadline change and said my accusation was false. I would be then making a grovelling apology.

Maybe all of these charades are diversions from asking the simple question which amounts to; did the AR4 Lead Authors and Review Editors who were all “resisting” my requests for information deal honestly with the IPCC’s Expert Reviewers?

I too would like to hear a review asking Jones why he sent out the request for deletions… what did he not want to come to light… is that the whole truth… how does he square his request with the IPCC stated policy on openness…

Lucy, or anyone else, please feel free. No one has yet suggested to me an honest reason why Boulton should have mangled my submission and the Russell Review team should have acquiesced in it. In one sense it is an echo of what caused the “delete any emails” email. I believe it is the lie that is being covered up. Making a professional misjudgement over a deadline would not end a scientist’s career but telling a lie and trying to cover it up certainly aught to. Depending on how many knew of the lie it might destroy all credibility in the current IPCC expert network.

There are several important edits that (former UEA man) Boulton or someone made and which B&O copied into their version which allowed them to pretend against the overwhelming evidence that there was no deadline by which Wahl and Ammann had to be “in press”. But I now think what Jones, Briffa and Osborn really did not want to be questioned on is contained in my paragraphs 62 and 63, which of course they were not asked to address.

62. I have extensively searched the thousands of comments in several chapters of WGI and can find no evidence that “many” Reviewers wanted to add citations to papers that did not meet the originally published timetable and guidelines, but there will always be some that will ask for exemptions to any rule or deadline.

63. As the official comments were not published until long after the final report, only the individual Reviewers knew what comments they had each made on the draft and were in no position to question the reason the TSU gave. Even if this was the real reason, it does not justify the abandonment of the prescribed criteria of the Expert Review process, which were there to ensure that it was above reproach.

Remember I wrote my submission exactly a year ago in a hurry. Since then I have looked more exhaustively using search strings and I am as certain as I can be that AR4 WGI TSU told a lie and that no Expert Reviewer in the 11,000 plus comments asked for the “in-press” deadline to be AFTER the expert review stage. Only Benestad asked for any relaxation. He was not specific and his comment was rejected.

On 2 April 2010 I emailed Solomon, Overpeck, Pachauri and Christ. I wrote:

In my letter to Dr Christ of 27 May 2008, which has never been answered, I
asked,
“Can you tell me to which of the published WGI reviewers comments the
Manning memo is referring, and provide me with the minutes of the meeting
at which the Manning memo was discussed and authorised?”

Under UK Freedom of Information rules, I also asked this question of all three
British Review Editors but, following your emailed advice of 14 March 2008,
none have provided me any answers. I have searched all the WGI Expert
Reviewers comments and can find no evidence that anyone actually asked for
these “new guidelines”. Is it not the case that the suggestion that the “new
guidelines” were introduced at the request of the Expert Reviewers is simply
untrue and a cover for its real purpose?

I got an unsigned reply from AR5 WGI on 8 April 2010. It was very similar to what B&O attached to their response to the mangled version of my submission that Boulton had sent them. It did not offer any rebuttal of my allegation that no Expert Reviewer asked for the deadline change and that AR4 WGI had told a lie, which could have easily been done if what they told Expert Reviewers had been true. Given the UK libel laws how come no one has sent me a writ?

Boulton sent his mangled version of my submission to Briffa on 6 May 2010. I have no idea why Briffa needed Osborn’s help to reply. I try hard not to believe in conspiracy theories but this does test me.

Imagine the Bergen meeting when Overpeck, Jones and Solomon consider the comments that say Wahl and Ammann should be removed. What would that do to the WGI Report. Some of the Lead Authors had to be in on the lie but others may have have just swallowed the cover story.

From his evidence to Russell it seems that Mitchell missed the start of the Bergen meeting and knew nothing of the Wahl and Ammann deadline issue. The deadline lie would explain the remarkable way in which Solomon asked for the Review Editors’ Reports, which I described in paragraph 106 of my original submission but was not included in Boulton’s mangled version of it. If, as I now think, Mitchell knew nothing of the deadline change then Solomon’s haughty email would mean nothing to him and might explain why he alone made a cryptic comment in his RE report against her very clear suggestion not to. It would explain why he wrote to Solomon as soon as I questioned him and then let me see the correspondence which then led on to more requests.

Oh, and for good measure you should know that immediately after the Russell Review released its report all the correspondence held by Edinburgh University, who were contracted to Russell, was deleted – or so they say! Pure coincidence no doubt.

To David Holland
First I wish to congratulate you on the outstanding clarity and composition of your original and ‘unmangled’ submission to the Muir Russell enquiry (ICCER).
Your submission made their job so easy, indeed did most of it for them!

And yet it seems the panel members may never have seen your work. The Boulton mangling is a very different thing to have put before them!

Do you know if Muir Russell was actually prevented from seeing your submission? and only got the Boulton mangling?

If so would you not say that Boulton (if it was he) has something to answer for in terms of interference with important evidence? Have you FOI’d him for any correspondence on the adjustment’s to your documents? Sadly by then they were probably savvy enough to write nothing contententious, and worked by phone.

You could send an original copy to Muir the Hapless and ask him if he has read it before, I suppose.

Sorry for the delay. Like you I thought it impossible that the whole Russell Team could have known what Boulton sent to Briffa – and maybe they did not. However before I found out that the Review had mangled my submission I asked the two team members who are fellows of my professional body, the IET if they had read my submission. This is the reply

I can confirm that all submissions were read by all the Review Team’s members. I should also point out that in addition to the interview of 4th March that you mention, the following face-to-face interviews with Professor Jones also took place, as documented on the ICCER website:

Only Norton replied, and as I think I suggested, I really do not know who, other than Briffa, Osborn, Jones and Davies (UEA Pro Chancellor) may have seen the mangled version of my submission. In fact I can not even be sure if Briffa saw it – why would he need Osborn’s help to reply to it? Osborn’s name appears only once in a reference in Boulton’s mangled version of my submission and no allegation against Osborn was included in it.

Because this all makes little sense I submitted a FoIA request (and a DPA) to the University of Edinburgh. Peter Clarke is an an employee of the University and was formally contracted by the University to Sir Muir Russell. Boulton is listed as a Senior Honorary Professorial Fellow. This seems to mean he can come and go as he pleases and the University claim any of his emails are not technically held by them. In the case of Clarke’s the University claim he deleted all his emails on the Russell Review soon after its report was published and the Review “consolidated” its documents at an undisclosed location – possibly outside the reach of the FoIA. Deleting all correspondence on a commercial contract days after it is completed does strike me as a bit unusual, but as Steve says “this is climate science”.

I have now noted elsewhere that the email (and perhaps all other) correspondence by the panel was deleted just after their report was published.

A recent legal comment, I think on this thread above, suggests that Judges would take a very dim view of that, unless it was provably accidental. They could, being men born to suspicion, harbour a notion that deletion would amount to pre-emptive FOIrequest avoidance.

Sadly it betrays perhaps (unless we are looking at a most tragic accident) the type of thinking that these men can exhibit and their fears of revealing real opinions and facts. Certainly it makes a nonsense of the transparency promises so trumpeted at the very beginning of the panel pronouncements and formation of the membership!

A mixture, I think! Like John Neilsen-Gammon, I find management of Posts tricky still! I recall he was delighted to succeed in posting, but I also discerned from his test processes etc that he was more au fait with computer communication than I.

The emails in question were regarding a change in a key report that panel members did not get to see. They approved a different version of the report and the changed version was put into the final document without review. This is against the rules and intent of the principles as described in the attached IPCC document.

As was stated previously by Steven Mosher:
“So, I take it that Jones suggested that people delete mails to cover up something that wasn’t wrong? Maybe Jones should have consulted you as you obviously know the rules better than he does. Perhaps, you’d like to read the mail where Jones informs Christy about the rules about deadlines for submissions.”

“What is interesting in this case is how for all sorts of formal reasons a serious investigation may never take place !”

This post by Daniel begins to hint at the underlying issues and driving forces.
Why do we all deep down agree with him that there is no intent by”authority” or the “establishment” to actually conduct any kind of meaningful and logically convincing analysis or enquiry of what is happening before our eyes: the duping of the media into an entrenched uncritical AGW stance, the subsuming of the scientific world in the Universities and Institututions and the subversion of Western politicians (100% in the UK party system, and very nearly in the US).
It is precisely because the politicians themselves are victims of themselves. They actually for the most part believe the given narrative, legislate accordingly and keep the whole ball rolling. It has become horrificaly self perpetuating at this stage. The BBC is completely suborned by it all resulting in loss of all critical faculty, and that is a dangerously powerful force, and not just within the UK mainland. The same applies to the mainstream US media.

I have no idea why it all started and I DO NOT THINK it is a constructed “conspiracy” from some leftist cabal. ‘They’ (if they exist) haven’t the wit to put such a complex tragedy on the road. Most probably we are looking at an alarmist based snowball effect arising from the remarks of one or two self appointed but misguided ‘scientific gurus’ in the 1970’s.

The problem is nothing much will change until more and more persistent, calm, reasoned criticism of the public scientific literature reaches a critical ‘reappraisal mass’ allowing room for the politicians to exit their present position of unreasoned belief without too much loss of face. This is definitely happening, in large measure a result of McIntyre’s persistent logical critiques. Meantime we will see continuing whitewashes, funding of ‘approved scientific’ research establishments. and support from the BBC.

The good news is, to my surprise, the consequences of ‘climategate’ are I believe still reverberating and inducing increased and more thoughtful criticism and consideration in the political and media hierarchy. The internet is helping here immensely.

Bringing up another point on the law I’ve always found Dr. Jones defense of proactive deletion of e-mails quite laughable. The question of whether or not you can do things proactively in the anticipation of a legal request or other event has already been asked and answered and the answer is no. In divorce, bankruptcy, collections its established law that action taken in anticipation is considered the same as action taken after the fact. If you are trying to hide assets in anticipation of a divorce the judge will move the assets back in. In anticipation of a bankruptcy if you start moving assets to a trust the bankruptcy trustee will move the assets back into the estate. In anticipation of a collection if you start moving assets to hide them from the creditor the judge will give the assets to the creditor. This is all settled law if you anticipate legal action coming and take proactive action it makes no difference. The law doesn’t care, you did it in anticipation of the action.

[…] politicians, the NGOs and activists, the IPCC is being uncovered piece by piece. Hidden declines, deleting emails, manufactured "peer review", conspiring to have scienitists sacked, (and that is only […]

[…] the NSF OIG had visited me in Toronto. I published several posts on the report including a first post on the news that the OIG had asked Eugene Wahl about whether he had deleted emails and Wahl’s […]